Neon cuckoo bee
The neon cuckoo bee is a chunky bee with stripes of bright shiny blue and black, as if it glows. Its blue colour comes from tiny flat furry hairs. Like a cuckoo bird, it lets another bee raise its baby.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
The mother sneaks into the burrow of a blue-banded bee while nobody is home and lays her egg there.
Her baby then eats the food that was meant for the blue-banded bee's baby.
Its see-through wings are brown with a purple shine.
Its body is extra tough, with a strong armoured middle part.
Most asked questions about Neon cuckoo bee
?Why is it called a cuckoo bee?
Because, like a cuckoo bird, it lays its egg in another bee's nest and lets that nest feed its baby.
?Where does the neon cuckoo bee live?
In eastern and northern Australia and in New Guinea.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Thyreus nitidulus
- Named by
- Fabricius, 1804
- Group
- Bees and bumblebees
- Family
- Apidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Apidae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania
Where the facts come from
- Thyreus nitidulus (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Louise Docker. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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